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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-16T00:13:35+00:00

I coded a php page that displays information from a mysql database neatly into

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I coded a php page that displays information from a mysql database neatly into tables. I would like to hide empty table rows with an onLoad event handler.

Here is a sample table with code that hides a <td> when it has no content. but i can only get it to work with different IDs:

        <script type="text/javascript">
        function hideTd(id){
            if(document.getElementById(id).textContent == ''){
              document.getElementById(id).style.display = 'none';
            }
          }
        </script>
        </head>
        <body onload="hideTd('1');hideTd('2');hideTd('3');">
        <table border="1">
          <tr>
            <td id="1">not empty</td>
          </tr>
          <tr>
            <td id="2"></td>
          </tr>
          <tr>
            <td id="3"></td>
          </tr>
        </table>
    </body>

what i want to do is use a class for the <td>s to achieve the same thing while only referencing the class once, and not referencing every single id that I want to remove, which will not even work for my dynamic content. I tried using this code:

    <script type="text/javascript">
    function hideTd(){
        if(document.getElementsByClassName().textContent == ''){
          document.getElementsByClassName().style.display = 'none';
        }
      }
    </script>
    </head>
    <body onload="hideTd('1');">
    <table border="1">
      <tr>
        <td class="1">not empty</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td class="1"></td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td class="1"></td>
      </tr>
    </table>
</body>

but it does not work. its supposed to hide the empty <td>s that have the specified class. how do i hide empty <td>s using classes, not IDs?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    There are several issues:

    1. Class names (and IDs) are not allowed to start with a digit.
    2. You have to pass a class to getElementsByClassName().
    3. You have to iterate of the result set.

    Example (untested):

    <script type="text/javascript">
function hideTd(className){
    var elements = document.getElementsByClassName(className);
    for(var i = 0, length = elements.length; i < length; i++) {
       if( elements[i].textContent == ''){
          elements[i].style.display = 'none';
       } 
    }

  }
</script>
</head>
<body onload="hideTd('td');">
<table border="1">
  <tr>
    <td class="td">not empty</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="td"></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="td"></td>
  </tr>
</table>
</body>

    Note that getElementsByClassName() is not available up to and including IE8.

    Update:

    Alternatively you can give the table an ID and use:

    var elements = document.getElementById('tableID').getElementsByTagName('td');

    to get all td elements.

    To hide the parent row, use the parentNode property of the element:

    elements[i].parentNode.style.display = "none";
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